Local History: Scranton lawyer, judge involved in Patty Hearst case

It was a Scranton native who tipped off authorities that Patty Hearst spent a summer with Symbionese Liberation Army members at a Wayne County farmhouse back in 1974.

Another Scranton native presented evidence to a grand jury in Harrisburg in an attempt to indict some of Miss Hearst’s captors.

It all started in March 1975, when Scranton resident Walter Scott told city police that Miss Hearst, the granddaughter of millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst, had been taken to South Canaan Twp. by Mr. Scott’s brother, Jack, and several other SLA members. The tip was a turning point in the kidnapping case, leading investigators to Miss Hearst and several members of the terrorist group in San Francisco in September 1975.

Jack Scott, a writer and radical, was a standout track star at Central and West Scranton high schools. During her trial in early 1976, Miss Hearst said Jack Scott and his wife, Micki, along with Jack’s parents, John and Louise Scott, “helped her flee the West Coast and hid her in a Wayne County farmhouse” in 1974 and 1975, according to newspaper articles.

Jack Scott denied Miss Hearst’s accusations, saying she was “saying and acting exactly as the FBI and the Justice Department would like her to.”

U.S. Attorney S. John Cottone, who also hailed from Scranton, was determined to indict Jack Scott and others who harbored Miss Hearst, who was a fugitive from justice in Wayne County after participating in a bank robbery with the SLA in 1974. He spent years presenting evidence to a federal grand jury in Harrisburg.

Among the people Mr. Cottone hoped the grand jury would hear from was Miss Hearst herself. On Feb. 11, 1976, The Scranton Times published an article quoting Mr. Cottone as saying he was waiting on the outcome of Miss Hearst’s trial in San Francisco before he could bring her in front of a grand jury.

Though Miss Hearst was convicted in California and sentenced to seven years in prison for bank robbery, she never came to Pennsylvania to testify against Jack Scott and the SLA.

Several others Mr. Cottone called to testify before the grand jury fought the subpoenas, leading to the involvement of another of Scranton’s leading legal minds.

William J. Nealon, appointed to the federal bench in Scranton in 1962, ultimately found Jay Weiner and Phillip Shinnick in contempt of court and sent both men to prison in September 1976 after they refused to cooperate with prosecutors presenting evidence to the grand jury.

U.S. attorneys were trying to prove that Mr. Weiner, a sports writer who was friends with Jack Scott, visited the farmhouse while Miss Hearst was there.

Mr. Shinnick, an assistant professor at Rutgers University and Olympic track star, was accused of driving a car used to return Miss Hearst to California.

Both men had refused to testify before the grand jury; Mr. Shinnick also refused to provide his hair, handwriting and fingerprints. Both argued that Mr. Cottone and his aides were using the grand jury to force them to incriminate themselves and claimed the government put them under electronic surveillance illegally.

In May 1978, prosecutors admitted to Scranton Times reporter Bill Halpin they were throwing in the towel. That Jack Scott wouldn’t be indicted was not exactly a revelation, though, since Mr. Halpin had reported that federal prosecutors had shown signs of giving up on the case more than a year earlier.

Mr. Cottone went on to serve as a Lackawanna County judge from 1980 until 2005. Judge Nealon continues to hear federal cases in a building in downtown Scranton that bears his name.

Miss Hearst received a pardon from then-President Bill Clinton in 2001.

ERIN L. NISSLEY is an assistant metro editor at The Times-Tribune and has lived in the area for seven years.

Contact the writer:

localhistory@timesshamrock.com

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